Michael Brown contra Eric Garner: further reflections on the twilight of the racism of impunity

Racism is not a constant of the human spirit. Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture”

In last week’s essay in this column, I wrote with great but cautious optimism that the racism of impunity, the racism that is violent and completely unashamed to show its face to the world, this crude and destructive racism is in the twilight of its long, historic existence. One justification that I gave for this cautious optimism is the fact of the sheer number of people of all races, black, white, brown and yellow, in cities across every region of the United States who were protesting and demonstrating against the slaying of unarmed black men and teenagers by white police officers. A week after I wrote last week’s essay the protests and demonstrations have not only continued they have grown bigger. As a matter of fact, in one of the most dramatic expressions of these protests, athletes in major American sports like basketball and football – with tens of millions of fans – have been displaying powerful, symbolic expressions of protest against the racist violence of the police, expressions like the wearing T-shirts bearing the inscription “I can’t breathe”. Indeed, as I write these words on Friday, December 12, 2014, the word is out that next weekend, a big, “Million-Man March” against racism is planned to take place in the American capital, Washington, DC.

Now, this is all well and good but it is not the main reason why I am asserting that the racism of impunity is in its twilight days. Indeed, as important as the protests and demonstrators are, they do not constitute the real reason why I am returning to the subject in this week’s column. For this, we have to turn to an unprecedented development that is closely connected to the social media that has turned the tables decisively against the forces of violent racist impunity among white American policemen and their millions of defenders and supporters in Congress, the media and ordinary citizens. Since this development is, in my opinion, an absolutely crucial factor in the ongoing protests, demonstrations and debates pertaining to the slaying of unarmed black people by white police policemen, I would like to put it across in as concrete and dramatic a way as possible. This is why, in the title of this piece, I have hinted at this development by the contrast I am implying in the phrase, “Michael Brown contra Eric Garner”. Both men, unarmed, died at the hands of white policemen, one in Fergusson, Missouri and the other in Staten Island, New York City. What contrast am I making between the deaths of these two men and, more particularly, the role of social media in public perceptions of, and debates on their deaths?

On the surface, the difference is quite simple and indeed may seem unremarkable: no video clip exists of the last moments of the death of Michael Brown at the hand of officer Darren Wilson in Fergusson, Missouri; by contrast, the video clip of Eric Garner’s last moments in the chokehold of officer Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, New York immediately went viral on the Internet from the moment of its release and millions of people have seen it across the length and breadth of America and the world. But the matter is not that simple. If I may put the significance, the weightiness of the difference quite sharply, I would say that while to all people of goodwill of all races the video clip of Eric Garner’s last dying moments says a lot, to the defenders and supporters of the Darren Wilsons and Daniel Pantaleos of this world that video clip means absolutely nothing. In other words, to their millions of supporters, no evidence, no proof that their black victims were unjustly and senselessly killed will make them waver in their support of killer white policemen. What this means is that black lives do not matter in the least to these white cops and their supporters. And if this is the case, they cannot be persuaded by any evidence to withhold their support for the Darren Wilsons and Daniel Pantaleos among white police officers of America.

But, this, it is beginning to become more and more apparent, is not exactly true. No nation, no social group in the world is immune to the effects and ramifications of the social media. The supporters and defenders of racist killer policemen are no exception to this rule, this norm of the 21st century world of the pervasively mediatized interplay between reality and the images circulated and consumed through the digital appliances that dominate our lives all over the world. The “evidence” provided by the social media can no longer be either ignored or left out of the logics that structure our daily lives, personal or collective. In other words, if the social media catch you in a compromised or damning moment and then circulates that moment to the whole world, you cannot continue to act as if you are untouched by the national and global circulation of your moment of inhumanity, embarrassment or shame. This is the unexpected dilemma that has hit the defenders and supporters of the racism of impunity in the United States like a tsunami of moral and social crisis. Let me explain what I am claiming here by briefly returning to the concrete cases of the racist killers, Darren Wilson and David Pantaleo, and the difference between them that was established by the social media.

Fortuitously, the decision not to charge Darren Wilson by the grand jury in Fergusson, Missouri came two weeks before the decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, New York. Since there was no recording, no video clip of Wilson’s slaying of Michael Brown, the grand jury hearing that case was presented with widely varying and divergent testimonies of what actually took place in the fatal encounter. Moreover, the public prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury was quite openly sympathetic to policemen and their unions in general and Darren Wilson in particular. In the absence of any recording of the fateful event, this white public prosecutor manipulated his presentation of the evidence to the grand jury in favor of Darren Wilson. At any rate, the case became one of the classic instances of “take-your-pick” between one man’s word against another man’s word, with the jurors left to choose which side of the evidentiary divide to lean toward. In a country in which, overwhelmingly, all-white or predominantly white jurors never rule against white police officers who kill unarmed black men, the die was cast and not too many people were surprised that Darren Wilson was declared free to walk away, no indictment if you please.

Things were completely different in the case of Daniel Pantaleo and the grand jury that he faced in Staten Island, New York. The evidence against him presented in the video clip on the Internet was both unambiguous and overwhelming. The Chief Medical Examiner of New York City had proclaimed Pantaleo’s slaying of Garner a homicide. Moreover, the use of the chokehold with which he killed Garner had been banned by the New York City Police Department for more than a decade precisely because it had caused many deaths of suspects in the course of attempted arrests by police officers. Above all else, the evidence of the video clip not only showed that Garner was unarmed, it also showed that he was in fact jumped and pounded upon by five burly white policemen; since he could therefore not have escaped the grip of the arresting police officers even if he had wanted to, they did not have to apply lethal force in arresting him. For all these reasons, as people awaited the decision of the Staten Island grand jury in the wake of the disappointment of the decision of the Fergusson grand jury’s decision that had absolved Darren Wilson of any criminal indictment, the feeling was high among the general population in America that this was one case in which the police could not use the convenient argument of conflicting evidence to abort the cause of justice and let Daniel Pantaleo off the hook. But of course that is precisely what the grand jury in Staten Island did; they chose to completely ignore the damning evidence against Pantaleo and his fellow killer officers. In other words, to the impunity of the policemen who killed Garner, the grand jury members of Staten Island added their own impunity of complete disregard for the evidence provided in the video clip that showed to the whole world how Garner was killed.

Impunity has its limits and sometimes those limits can make all the difference in the world. There have been countless cases in which all-white or predominantly white juries completely ignored clear-cut evidence of criminal wrongdoing of white policemen and consistently ruled to uphold and sustain terrible miscarriages of justice against black people, especially black men and teenagers in the inner city ghettoes of America. But those were days before the rise, rise and further rise of the age of social media in which the eyes of the whole world are turned on America and on every single nation on the planet. In the period before the advent of the social media to a place of commanding presence in the world, impunity in American race relations always relied on a cloistered, hidden and protected form of white tribalism. To most decent, progressive and fair-minded white people, this was always a cause of great shame, embarrassment and guilt, this protected and unashamed white tribalism that kept alive blatant forms of racism that belonged to the epochs of slavery and separate and unequal segregation. Now, the social media are relentlessly stripping the cover off this revanchist, murderous and racist white tribalism and things will never be the same again. In this past week alone, we have seen, read or heard about condemnations of the Staten Island grand jury by prominent groups and individuals among American whites that had always defended and supported grand juries that shielded white policemen who shot and killed unarmed black men or teenagers. Where this unprecedented departure from a long tradition and practice of defence of the racism of impunity will lead no one knows, but it is important to record this rupture, even if it is a small, inchoate one.

At any rate, I repeat: impunity does have its limits. And I add: look for some of the most telling expressions of those limits in the effects and ramifications of the social media of the new and still unfolding digital age, with their anarchic, uncontrollable and contradictory tendencies.

In conclusion, I ask the reader to please note that in this piece, I have limited myself to the racism of impunity. If it is the case that it is by far the worst form of racism, it is however not the only racism that the world still has to deal with. My main or underlying point in this essay – as well as in last week’s piece – has been to suggest that if this racism of impunity that is the worst of all forms of racism can find no refuge from the changing, transforming forces of 21st century experience, then we can agree with the utopian view of Frantz Fanon as stated in the epigraph to this piece: “Racism is not a constant of the human spirit”.